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It All Depends...

Jeff Atherholt

Mar 12, 2018

Have you ever watched a film of an imploding building? Explosives are placed at the parts of the structure that keep it standing. Once the explosives go off, the supports are compromised and the entire building literally falls apart collapsing from within.

Once Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?" and He responded by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your soul and with your entire mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

He then says something very interesting: “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

What did Jesus mean?

Jesus was saying that our faith, from the prophets to the Law and everything in between, is totally dependent upon love.

That’s because the term “the Law and the Prophets” referred to everything within the Jewish faith regarding our attitude towards God and others as found in the Old Testament Scripture with all its legal provisions and prophetic proclamations.

One look at The Ten Commandments shows us that roughly the first half refers to our attitude toward God, and the second half refers to our attitude toward our fellow man.

And the prophets: Their messages call us to turn from a life that runs contrary to both God and man and return to loving Him and our fellow man as shown in the law.

Since Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, then this truth regarding the Law and the Prophets depending upon love extends to the Christian faith as well.

Now consider this… can we truly love God and at the same time abuse His name, worship other Gods, and bow down to idols? Not likely. And can we truly love our neighbor if we lie to them, steal from them, and murder them? Of course not!

So the “building,” which is our faith, depends upon love that God has for us and that we have for God and our neighbor. This only makes sense when we consider the description of God given to us by John the Apostle; that God, who created all things, is love placing in all of us a need for love.

Take away that love from the Christian faith and it collapses into a pile of useless rubble. As the Apostle Paul stated in his first letter to the Corinthians: without love we become as useless and irritating as clanging cymbals and noisy gongs, saying nothing, being nothing, gaining nothing, and giving nothing to God who is love and a world in need of His love.

So how do we keep the Christian faith standing while the world is falling apart? Well… it all depends.

Jeff Atherholt is 95.1 SHINE-FM's Creative Services Director, a dad of three girls, and a proud grandfather. Tip: if you're ever looking for Jeff in the SHINE-FM office, just listen for the whistling. We'd put his whistling talents up against the guy who whistled the Andy Griffith Show theme song any day!